Coronavirus in NY: Cuomo orders lockdown, shuts down non-essential businesses
Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Friday ordered the Empire State to shut down and asked local businesses and manufactures to step up as officials mounted a desperate struggle to slow the coronavirus pandemic.
“I want to be able to say to the people of New York — I did everything we could do,” Cuomo told reporters at the state Capitol. “And if everything we do saves just one life, I’ll be happy.”
The restrictions take effect Sunday night at 8 p.m. and will shut down all nonessential businesses across the state, leaving just grocery stores, pharmacies and other essential operations open. All non-solitary outside activities, like basketball and other team sports are also banned.
The lockdown also requires all nonessential government and private-sector employees to work from home.
Cuomo said the MTA will continue to run city subways, buses and Metro-North and Long Island Rail Road trains. The agency announced Friday it will allow backdoor boarding on local buses beginning Monday to help protect bus drivers from exposure.
“We have to do it, we have to be serious,” Cuomo said.
“Everyone has personal freedom, and everyone has personal liberty, and I’ll always protect that,” he added. “But everyone also has a responsibility to everyone else.”
Laundromats and gas stations will be allowed to remain open, as will liquor stores and restaurants for take-out and delivery service only.
Doctors’ and veterinarians’ offices can remain open, too.
The new emergency action came as the Empire State’s coronavirus case count ballooned.
Officials had tallied more than 7,100 cases across the state by 12 a.m. Friday — more than 4,400 in New York City. That evening, the city Health Department reported the Big Apple’s case load had surged to nearly 5,700 as 6 p.m.
Cuomo said nonessential businesses that stay open despite the ban or keep employees coming in will be fined and that he planned to coordinate with New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Delaware.
The directive came just hours after California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered his entire state to stay home in its own desperate bid to slow the pandemic’s spread.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said the NYPD would hit the streets and begin issuing warnings Sunday evening.
“[Gov. Cuomo’s] order is the right thing to do, to protect us all,” said de Blasio during a late Friday press conference at City Hall.
“It’s not going to happen overnight,” Hizzoner cautioned. “It’s not going to be perfect the first time.”
Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said summonses and arrests would be issued as a “last resort.”
De Blasio also announced a slew of new measures to tighten the Big Apple’s shutdown, including suspending all field permits at the city’s public parks and reductions in NYC Ferry service on the East River because of plummeting ridership.
City Hall also rolled out plans for 93 “enrichment centers” to care for the kids of frontline city employees like cops, firefighters, transit and sanitation workers, and doctors and nurses.
The Department of Education also said it would have 435 city locations where families who depend on public schools for free or reduced-price meals can pick up breakfast and lunch.
And, after intense criticism, de Blasio said that the Department of Transportation will roll out temporary bike lanes to better protect bicyclists in Brooklyn and Manhattan as ridership soars during the outbreak.
Manhattan’s new lane will run from 34th to 42nd Street on Second Avenue, while Brooklyn’s will run along Smith Street.
The new measures came as city and state officials kept sounding the alarm that coronavirus caseloads could crush hospitals.
New York state only has 3,000 ICU beds and about 6,000 ventilators.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we get to a day when we have double-digits new people dying every day,” warned city Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot.
Cuomo ordered every local health department to contribute unused respirators and asked local businesses to step in and produce badly needed supplies.
“It’s ventilators, ventilators, ventilators. That is the greatest need,” Cuomo said. “We’re notifying any health department in the state: if you have a ventilator and you are not using it at this time or it is non-essential to your use, we want it.”
Cuomo also asked New York businesses and factories to examine their equipment and see if they could produce badly needed hospital masks and respirators.
Famed designer Christian Siriano quickly responded his staff of sewers — who are working from home — could make masks for hospitals.
The governor’s office confirmed that it is in touch with Siriano is working out the details.
Additional reporting by David Meyer